23 bites of elephant: Using the social web to support PLCs

Our schools are deeply invested in the philosophy and practice of staff development through Professional Learning Communities. Here is my question: How can read/write web tools support the work of PLCs and how might teachers gain the understandings and skills necessary to use these tools in the context of applying them to their own professional development? Eat the Web 2.0 elephant in small bites?

 One description of a professional learning community is: (underscoring is mine)

"teachers in a school and its administrators continuously seek and share learning and then act on what they learn. The goal of their actions is to enhance their effectiveness as professionals so that students benefit. This arrangement has also been termed communities of continuous inquiry and improvement... The requirements necessary for such organizational arrangements include:

• the collegial and facilitative participation of the principal, who shares leadership - and thus, power and authority - through inviting staff input in decision making
• a shared vision that is developed from staff's unswerving commitment to students' learning and that is consistently articulated and referenced for the staff's work
• collective learning among staff and application of that learning to solutions that address students' needs
• the visitation and review of each teacher's classroom behavior by peers as a feedback and assistance activity to support individual and community improvement and
• physical conditions and human capacities that support such an operation (SEDL, Issues About Change, Vol 6. No 1, 1997)

(See also Richard DuFour's ASCD Educational Leadership article "What is a Professional Learning Community?")

 
Reduced to its simplest definition, a PLC is a group of professionals working collaboratively to discuss and practice effective professional strategies in order to increase student performance. How can this discussion and collaboration be enhanced and extended using Web 2.0 tools?

Modeled after CSLA's School Library Learning's 23 Things and Charlotte Mecklenberg Public Library's Learning 2.0 23 Things (which was inspired by 43 things), the plan below is a set of activities designed to help PLCs learn to use online tools that will enhance their efforts. It is my belief that once teachers experience the educational benefits of these tools personally, they will be more likely to use them with students in their own classrooms as well.

Month One - Blog reading and reacting
Tool: Technocrati

1. Read: Two articles defining and describing Web 2.0. Read the past month's entries for two educational blogs.

2. Participate: Use Technocrati to locate two blogs of personal interest and three blogs of professional usefulness, related to the topic of your PLC.

3. Do: Write responses to two blog postings.

Month Two - RSS feed aggregators
Tool: Google Reader

4. Read: Read the description of RSS and RSS feed aggregators. Read the instructions to Google Reader.

5. Participate: Set up a Google Reader account. Subscribe to the blogs located in the previous month.

6. Do: Monitor the Reader daily. Add five new feeds and respond to three blog posts.

Month Three - Blog writing
Tool: edublogs

7. Read: Two articles on blogging use by educators and about blogging ethics.

8. Participate: Set up a edublog account for your PLC (group activity)

9. Do: Each member contribute an entry and a response on the PLC's each week.

Month Four - Wikis
Tool: pbwiki

10. Read: Two articles about wikis, Wikipedia and/or the theories of collective intelligence.

11. Participate: Use pbWiki to create a document that articulates your PLC's norms and goals. Distribute the password to each member of the PLC. (group activity).

12. Do: Edit the group norm document. Review changes by other group members. Add additional documents to the wiki as needed.

Month Five - Social Bookmarking
Tool: del.icio.us

13. Read: Articles about social bookmarking, tagging and folk taxonomies.

14. Participate: Create a personal del.icio.us account. Add three bookmarks related to the topics your PLC is studying.

15. Do: Distribute the URLs for each member's del.icio.us account. Create an RSS for a topic search and add it to your Google Reader page.

Month Six - Shared media
Tools: Flickr, TeacherTube/YouTube , LibraryThing

16. Read: Introductory material for each of these sites.

17. Participate: Locate and watch a video from TeacherTube or YouTube. Search for and download a photo from Flickr. Do a search on Librarything for recommended books.

18. Do: Create a Flickr account and upload three photographs that show a teaching practice or upload a video to TeacherTube showing an effective teaching practice.

Month Seven - Personal networks
Tool: Ning

19. Read: The FAQ for Ning.

20. Participate: Create a Ning account for your group. (group activity)

21. Do: Post a message and feedback to your Ning group.

Month Eight - MUVEs
Tool: Second Life

22. Read: Two articles on MUVEs and their potential in education.

23. Participate: Create an avatar and attend a professional development opportunity in Second Life.

Here is where I need your help, dear readers. In your experience, before I start fleshing this out with instructions, links, and assessment measures:

• Is this a good selection of tools (given strengthened collaboration and communication is the goal)? (Ning still does nothing for me. Does Second Life really support the work of a PLCs?
  
• Can teachers be expected to complete these tasks independently, with minimal F2F instruction? Is there enought variety in the activities? How can one encourate reflection in these activities?
  
• Any ways you can see to make this more palatable to already busy, even over-whelmed teachers? How might one sustain the use of these tools?
• Are there better ways to teach these technology tools or support PLCs?
  
• Other comments?

I need help here!

http://www.kamalii.k12.hi.us/EBC2005/images/Spider/tiara.jpg

What our new teachers need to know

A pundit once commented that while a medical doctor from the 19th century would be lost in a modern hospital and a 19th century banker would not be able to function in a bank today, a 19th century teacher could just pick up the chalk and perform just fine in the 21st century classroom.

I'm here to tell you that just ain't so.

Here is the list of techie things Mankato's new teachers needs to master very, very quickly to be able to do their basic jobs:

• E-mail/Shared calendaring (Outlook/Entourage)
• District email lists are and how they may be used
• Resources and forms can only be found on our district website
• Attendance reporting software (Classxp), network passwords
• How to access online file storage and back up files
• Online research resources and library catalog (United Streaming, Net Trekker, Atomic Learning)
• Ethics and Acceptable Use Policy
• How to find a video and order a videotape/DVD (online)
• How to locate and interpret the results of our value-added tests (NWEA) and access information on their students in our datamining program (Sagebrush Viewpoint)
• How to complete online IEPs for Special Ed teachers
• How to use our reading software (Read Naturally and Accelerated Reader)
• How to use to the online gradebook (IntegradePro) and set it up for parent viewing (ParentConnect)
• For an increasing number of teachers, How to use to the IWB
  
• How to use to the create and maintain the required teacher webpage

All this before thinking about basic productivity tools like word processing or the use of any technology for instructional uses with kids. (So, technology has not revolutionized education to many folks disappointment. But it has changed it. Still automating rather than infomating, as Zuboff would describe.)

Up until now our department had a two hour block during the standard two day orientation to help bring new teachers up to speed on technology. It was almost enough time to distribute lots of handouts and tell them they need to learn this stuff fast. "Good luck and call somebody if you get stuck."

Next year for the first time we have budgeted dollars to pay our new hires and some instructors for a full day of new teacher "technology" orientation. It's not enough, of course, but it's better.

I think we should get a humanitarian award!

Photo above  from the Library of Congress American Memories collection. 

One staff development approach does not fit all

My writing "assignment" for the 2007 spring/summer edition of the MACUL Journal is due soon. Here's the lead:

______________ 

Consider these teachers and their technology professional development needs:

Judy has just come back to teaching after a ten-year stint as a stay-at-home mom. During new teacher orientation, she learns that she is now expected to keep her grades using a computerized gradebook, take attendance online, read the staff bulletin as an e-mail attachment, use the district’s “mapping” software when writing curriculum, create all student materials using a word processor, and keep her classroom webpage current. There is also this strange looking device called an interactive white board in front of the room. “How, after only ten years,” she wonders, “can I feel so out of touch? And how do I learn to do all these things?”

Tom’s just about had it with the “personal narrative” unit in his writing class – he can’t get the kids interested. But he’s been reading that when students write for a wider audience than just the teacher, their level of concern and writing quality goes up. He thinks he’d like to try a class webblog so students can post their narratives and get reactions from other students. Ah, but where to start learning how to create a blog?

Juanita is a part of the site team that is responsible for the building improvement plan. One of the big tasks this year has been looking at student test scores and disaggregating the data for specific groups of students like English Language Learners. While the district uses a giant online data mining/data analysis program, its complexity baffles, not just Juanita, but the rest of the site team as well - including the principal.

Do any or all of these scenarios sound familiar to you? Judy, Tom and Juanita are all modeled after real teachers in the Mankato (MN) schools, but can be found in any district across the country. Each of these teachers has a very real, but very different need for “technology" staff development experiences. To think that any one training program or any one training approach will satisfy the requirements of all teachers in a district would be a mistake.

But how can any district meet the diverse technology training needs of all its teachers?

______________

 Clever approaches your school or district has taken to extend the reach and effectiveness of its staff development in technology efforts?